Dangerous Days

So far my new year's resolution , to get up an hour earlier each day and start drawing again has started rather ... wobbly.

I have managed to get up earlier ... some mornings, but they rank in the minority. Such a little thing, and so difficult to implement.

And it's not because Michael now has the flu I had last week, or because there's been a lot of overtime in the nursing home where I work, and housework overtime when I got home, and Jon got extra late home from work, too, the first week or so and ...

Because we're dealing with it - like a family on a little life-raft who know they have to stick together to make it to harbor. Yes, we're dealing with it - because that's what families are supposed to do.

The best example was actually set by my 3 ½ year old son, when he was tugged in bed, scarf, tea with honey 'n' all lined up, cold medicine ... He said:

"Mommy, you don't need to come up again if you want to go watch some telly with dad ... "

:-)


So I'm in danger, all right  ... of being pulled back by the gravity of everyday life.

But this morning I did get up and scratched something down. I'm keeping with quick portraits now - and I've dug deep in my old photo-albums for some reference. I need to warm up; it's like coming out of a freezer.

Now, this pic may look good to you, but I assure you it doesn't look all that hot to me, considering that it was just about what I was able to draw, too - 16 years ago. I haven't developed an inch since then... at least as regards improving my drawing ability. But at least I have not gotten worse, either.

Anyway, here it is - the first of the first two of 2012:

Yup, it is Lin  - my best friend from the high school and early college years. My best friend who is no more.

When I first met her we were ready to smack each other dead, and later she became something like a soul-friend to me. Isn't that the most wondrous of things?

She looks a bit tired and serious here, and that she was. But I kinda like the reference pic for this drawing. I took it with an old polaroid cam, after a high school party when she had unusually light make-up on for a change, well, except for the cheek crucifix. I'm sorry if it offends anyone, but that's what her make-up was like that evening.

It wasn't religious, though. Lin was a bonafide atheist, and very conscious about it at 15 or so.

Not, it was because Lin had a thing for science fiction, and doing, like, odd things  - to make an impression. For this party she was trying to dress like some character she saw in one scene or something from a movie called Blade Runner, which I'm sure you've heard of. And whatever the make-up - crucifix and all - meant to the director of that particular movie, if he even knew (because it's just there in a scene of about 2 seconds) ... well, I don't think the world will ever get to share that mystery.

We had seen the rerun of this particular movie in an old art-cinema in downtown Cleveland. I had never cared for science fiction and she had to drag me aloong. I had never understood why people freaked out about Star Wars. And I have to admit that maybe part of the reason she finally convinced me was that I wanted to be as weird as her, who was my only real friend at the time. Lin was already quite an outsider at school, but didn't care. I wanted to be like her in that respect. I dressed up like a Blade Runner-girl, too, for that particular party. (No dark make-up, though - mine was blue and yellow! :-)) 

Now, at this point you might think that all of this sounds like a science fiction story in and off itself - that she could suddenly convince me to like some nerd-stuff from her world. But I swear to you - when we came out from the dark, I was crazy about that movie. It was so beautiful and dark and philosophical all at the same time. And I admit it: I had a weak spot for Rachael and Harrison Ford's character - for their romance. She was a replicant, a kind of robot-something, and he might have been one but was actually employed to hunt down renegate replicants. It resonated with me that these people were so ... alienated - from each other, from the world at large.

And Lin loved that I loved it, of course. 

But I'll tell you more about that another day. For now I just want to add something about Lin, so you don't misunderstand me:

She wasn't a 'freak' or anything like that - not by a longshot. Excentric maybe, yes, but nothing more - and with good reason: She grew up rather lonely, only daughter of Greek IT-superstar Theodoros Christakis and his English litt professor-could-have-been, Julia Stephen. 

They lived in the posh bay area in the perimeter of Cleveland, in a big lug of a mansion, with a view to the Lake. Lin went to school up in Toledo, a super-duper-elite high school or something. She hated it. So after complaining loud enough, and getting the paperwork in order, her parents finally decided to allow her to switch. Enter Cuyahoga High, downtown Cleveland - and that's where she met another outsider: Namely me.

I didn't want to be an outsider, though. But it was too difficult not to be. I'm not sure if that was the reason, Lin and I hit it off so well. I don't believe in being 'together alone' and all that. I believe that people are drawn to each other for a reason, because they have something in common. Lin had her unfulfilled - partly mother-driven - ambitions of becoming the next big literary fiction hit, and despised her father who never seemed to be home when she needed him.

Maybe that sounds like a bad thing - if that was all we had in common: Our troubles with our parents. But it wasn't. It was just the hook, the immediate understanding she had of the problems I had and vice-versa. It got us together, yes, but it did not keep us together. At least I'd like to think so... 

No, really. It was something more, something precious. Lin wanted to be an artist, and so did I - I was drawing, she was writing. That's what we understood about each other that was more important than the dark stuff. That's what was more important than the fact that she was infinitely richer and cooler than I was, at least in the artificial social hierarchy that all teen girls must navigate at that age.

The only really dark area, which I suspected but could not find or meet, was Lin's self-hatred as well as her fragile mind. She would not allow me all the way in, and I did not dare to push her enough - to make her tell me about her secret pain. In a way I did not want to. I was afraid, of course. What if I would discover something I didn't like or couldn't handle. 

In the end that's what made it all crash, my lack of courage. It was too late for me to do anything to find that courage when I had to say goodbye to her in the church, after she had taken her own life. It was too late for regrets about what could have been and should have been. I spent 10 years dealing with that.

I'd like to think that I have laid her to rest, finally. And with her, my anger at her - for leaving me. And my anger at myself for not being brave enough to try to reach her before it was too late.

It might all sound very warped and pathetic and incomprehensible to you and I don't blame you. Sometimes I still don't understand it myself ... after all these years. After all this time thinking about it. But I guess, in a way, some things you don't need to 'understand' with words. You just need to feel what is right to know.

And I know what I feel. I feel that Lin always was, is, and will be my friend - and I hers. 

And that she has forgiven me. As I have forgiven her.

10 years ...